Confusing Stalking for Romance: Examining the Labeling and Acceptability of Men’s (Cyber)Stalking of Women

Evidence suggests that in the United States we live in a stalking culture — a culture in which stalking is normalized, minimized, and romanticized through various cultural institutions. We also live in an era when romantic interactions and dating are increasingly taking place online. Bringing together these ideas, the present study examines perceptions of lay observers of the cyberstalking of women with a focus on gender and stalking context. Drawing on data from an original vignette study via an Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) survey ( n = 727), we examine whether (a) observer’s gender, (b) four types of stalking contexts (ex-boyfriend, coworker, one-time date, and stranger), and (c) individual differences in observers’ attitudes regarding gender and sexuality beliefs (sexual double standards, benevolent sexism, and hostile sexism) impact lay perceptions of cyberstalking. We found that compared to men, women are more likely to label cyberstalking and to deem cyberstalking as less socially acceptable. Compared to the stranger stalking scenario, participants were less likely to label the other three scenarios as stalking; additionally, participants rated ex-boyfriend stalking, relative to stranger stalking, as more acceptable. We also found that attitudinal measures predict higher acceptability ratings across stalking contexts, and hostile sexist beliefs mediate the relationship between observers’ gender and likelihood of labeling the situation as stalking. Our results suggest that the minimization and normalization of cyberstalking may be driven not only by one’s gender, but also by a culturally accepted hierarchy of stalking narratives as well as gender attitudes.